Raney Branch (Bones, The Originals) is set to guest star opposite Gabrielle Union on BET’s popular drama series Being Mary Jane. Created by The Game‘s Mara Brock Akil, Being Mary Jane follows the sometimes disastrous personal and professional life of news anchor Mary Jane Paul (Union). Branch will play Aaliyah Luckett, an up-and-coming force of nature, in a multi-episode arc. Aaliyah is a junior PR associate with the network’s brand strategy firm, and she’s been tasked with improving Mary Jane’s Q-rating. Convinced that Mary Jane is a little too cool and unapproachable, Aaliyah sees it as her job to present Mary Jane to the viewing public as someone they’d want to watch reality shows like Real Housewives with. Smart, perceptive, and hip to a fault, she wants to boost Mary Jane’s likeability factor — and if that means helping Mary Jane get a date, so be it. Will Packer executive produces and Erica Shelton Kodish also is executive producer and showrunner.

Branch previously recurred in Bones and The Originals. Additional TV credits include a lead role in TV One’s Ringside, Grandfathered, Casual, New Girl and Chasing Life. She’s repped by E Cubed Management and Brady, Brannon & Rich.

Actress-comedian Dulce Sloan has booked a series-regular role opposite Eva Longoria in Type-A, Fox’s single-camera workplace comedy pilot from the Life in Pieces duo of executive producer Jason Winer and writer-producer Lesley Wake-Webster. Written by Wake-Webster and loosely based on the book Assholes: A Theory by Aaron James, Type-A — in the vein of Up in the Air — is an office comedy about a group of consultants hand-picked to do the dirty work most professionals can’t handle: layoffs, downsizing, generally delivering horrible news. To everyone else, they’re the enemy – to one another, they’re family. Sloan will play Wolf (fka Torres), the confident office tech guru who is a close friend of Axler’s (Longoria).

Winner of the 2016 NBC Stand Up Showcase, she was cast in last year’s Amy Poehler pilot Dumb Prince for NBC. Named as a comic to watch in 2017 by TimeOutLA, Sloan also has appeared in TruTV’s Comedy Knockout, MTV’s Acting Out and has co-hosted E! News Daily. She’s repped by APA, Levity Entertainment Group and Jackoway Tyerman.

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The HBR Media Team is a collective group of black women filmmakers, writers, and studio/network executives who are passionate about bringing visibility to women of African descent working in film and television.